The Few, The First: A Night at Tun Tavern, 1775

Setting:
Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, December 1775. It’s the coldest winter in recent memory, but inside, the heat of ambition and rebellion keeps the blood warm. Smoke curls from clay pipes, candles flicker low. The room smells of sweat-soaked wool, oak ale barrels, tallow, and pine ash from the hearth. Three Marines, newly sworn, sit at a corner table with a view of the door and fire. They speak in low tones, mugs in hand, the air thick with the weight of what’s coming.

Cast:
Isaac Crowley, 26, Rhode Island born merchant sailor, sharp tongue, sharp eyes. Driven by loyalty to an idea he can’t quite name.
Ebenezer Cook, 33, Philadelphia blacksmith, father of two, with a wariness worn into his bones. Practical, paternal, unshaken.
Nathaniel “Nat” Briggs, 19, fresh from the fields of Lancaster, raised on prayer and plow. Hopeful, impressionable, full of fire.

[Scene opens with the fire crackling, and a lull in the nearby laughter. Outside, the wind howls against the shuttered windows.]

Crowley (tapping his mug on the table)
Funny, ain’t it, we’re sittin’ in the same spot where Captain Nicholas himself put quill to paper just weeks past, birthplace of the Corps, right under our feet. And now we sit here, green as pond scum and twice as ugly, waitin’ for orders that may never come.

Briggs
Ain’t that wild, this tavern, this battered table, hell, it might end up in a book one day. “The first Marines raised at Tun Tavern,” they’ll say. We’ll be ghosts with names, assuming any of us live long enough to earn ’em.

Cook
Names or not, it ain’t about fame, lad. Fame don’t stop a British bayonet from findin’ your ribs. My boy asked me why I signed. I told him, ‘Cause when you get the call, you answer, even if that call leads straight to a shallow grave.

Crowley
Aye, I didn’t join for a parade. I joined ’cause I’ve sailed under too many flags that meant jack shit. I want to see one raised that’s worth the fight, worth spillin’ blood for, preferably theirs, not mine.

Briggs
You think we’ll see action soon? I overheard the barkeep, drunk as a lord, by the way, say there’s talk of a raid down south. New Providence, they said. British got gunpowder stores there. Could be our first taste of real lead.

Cook
Could be, or we sit on our asses ’til spring and eat stale biscuit ’til our teeth fall out and we’re gummin’ our enemies to death. Either way, we train, we drill, we wait, and we try not to die of boredom first.

Crowley
I heard from a quartermaster down at the docks, bastard owed me money, we’ll be assigned Brown Bess muskets. Heavy as a dead whore, takes near a full minute to load and prime. Ain’t ideal when some redcoat’s chargin’ at you with three feet of steel, but when it speaks, it speaks loud enough to wake the devil.

Briggs
What about pistols, or blades?

Cook
Only officers get pistols. We might get bayonets if they’re in supply and if the quartermaster ain’t sold ’em for rum money. Otherwise, we’re issued belts with cartridge boxes, hold twenty four rounds, assuming they don’t get wet, which they will. Maybe a hatchet if you’re lucky, and whatever knife you brought from home.

Briggs
My da gave me this one when I was twelve. Said it’d see me through my first deer, my first fight, and maybe my first girl. So far it’s done well by the deer.

Crowley
That order’s already backwards, I reckon. Most boys your age have worked their way through half the county by now.

Cook (chuckles)
Long as it’s sharp and you ain’t too squeamish about gettin’ blood under your nails, it’ll do. Hell, I’ve seen men killed with spoons when the situation called for it.

Briggs
Christ, Eben. With spoons?

Cook
Prison ship off Barbados. Man gets creative when he’s desperate. Point is, it ain’t the weapon, it’s the will to use it when the moment comes.

Briggs
Do you think we’ll win this war?

Crowley
We’ll fight, that’s all we know for certain. If we win, it’ll be because enough fools like us believed in something bigger than our own sorry hides. If we lose, well, least we’ll be too dead to care about the history books.

Cook
We’re farmers, blacksmiths, sailors, men without titles or fancy bloodlines. But that’s what makes us dangerous as hell. We ain’t fightin’ for some fat king who’s never held a musket. We’re fightin’ for each other, for the dirt under our boots, for the right to tell any man, king or beggar, to go straight to hell when he tries to tell us how to live.

Briggs
First to bleed, first to believe, and too damn stubborn to quit.

All three
To the Marines, and to not dyin’ like idiots.

(They drink. The tavern begins to quiet. Candles burn lower. A young man, no more than sixteen, stands by the door, hesitating, looking like he’s deciding between joining up or running home to his mother.)

Cook
He yours, Isaac?

Crowley
Never seen him. But he’s got that look, like a calf that’s just seen the butcher’s knife but ain’t smart enough to run yet.

Briggs
He’s got the pull, though. That thing in his chest that won’t let him walk away, even when common sense is screamin’ at him to.

Crowley (gesturing to an empty chair)
You lookin’ to join the Corps, lad? Fair warning, the pay’s shit, the food’s worse, and there’s a better than fair chance you’ll die in some godforsaken swamp with your guts spillin’ out.

Young man
Aye… if there’s still space.

Crowley
There’s always space for one more brave fool. Pull up that chair and we’ll tell you exactly how bad an idea this is. Then we’ll teach you how to do it anyway.

(The boy walks over slowly, drawn by something he can’t name. The table makes room. Outside, the wind howls like a warning, but inside, the fire burns steady. The story begins again.)